This is our Somalia,
you and I in the morning.
There is nothing but children of rags.
Hot sun, black backs and drinking sea,
sky and beach where you and me.
Grandfather blows into his phone,
as if into a dictaphone.
Someone is crawling into the market,
a hillock under a slope.
A wet shirt stuck to my leg
cold, hot, sworg.
Sand between your toes, your sand.
It’s easy for me to dance with you.
Above us, the sky is plump, such
gray, not blue.
Humid southern heat.
I hold you with my hand and everything
is yours sticks like a T-shirt and runs nose.
There is only the horizon ahead, and what is behind?
Behind someone’s poor and not our city.
You will raise the spray to the sky, beloved, beautiful.
Maybe black, maybe blue, maybe long, like fireworks
and visible in all directions. To me. And there is nothing.
Be here with me someday.
The sky will be bad, like that.
Or maybe stormy and maybe gold.

Anna Idelevich is a scientist by profession, Ph.D., MBA, trained in the neuroscience field at Harvard University. She writes poetry for pleasure. Her books and poetry collections include “DNA of the Reversed River” and “Cryptopathos” published by the Liberty Publishing House, NY. Anna’s poems were published by Louisville Review and Fleur-de-Lis Press among others. We hope you will enjoy their melody, new linguistic tone, and a slight tint of an accent.